“Can you even fit in the shower in there?” she asked when he looked over at her, eyebrow raised.
He removed the toothbrush to answer but the voice issuing over the ship-wide comm drowned him out.
“Miss. Archer, this is the bridge. We have an incoming message for you, from a… Mrs. Archer-Russell?”
She blinked in surprise, sitting up. “What? How the hell did she manage to get the message to me here?”
“It’s not live, I’m afraid. We recovered your personal data stream from the last relay tower we passed by and picked up a couple of messages. I…” There was a pause and a cough. “Well, I figured you’d be a guest with us for a while, so I added your credentials to our comms array. I hope that was okay?”
“That’s Skinny,” Zero stage-whispered. “He’s our comms guy. Ain’t nothing he can’t do with a radio.”
There was a laugh from the speakers. “Yeah, it’s a little more complicated than a ‘radio’ as you well know, Toaster. I’ll send both messages through to your quarter’s console.”
“Thanks,” Zero growled, disappearing for a moment to spit foam into the sink and rinse his mouth out. When he reappeared, Eris had wrapped herself in the lightest blanket and was sitting on the edge of the bed.
Movement this morning was far more comfortable than it had been last night, but she was still convinced she was in a dream. There was no way Talent could have fixed the totally fucking fubar that was her damaged nervous system all in one go. Could he?
“Toaster?” she asked as the big cyborg reappeared.
He grimaced. “Assholes, the lot of them. We were clearing out a possible Krin invasion on one of the Velexian system worlds when we passed an abandoned village. Skinny found a toaster… ‘Hey, Zero, I found your mom!’”
Her eyes widened, and she slapped a hand over her mouth before she could laugh. “He didn’t!”
“Asshole.” Zero groused again, but she caught the quirk at the corner of his lips. “It was hilarious, but don’t you dare tell him I said that. I’ve been fighting off them trying to change my nickname to Toaster ever since.”
Her ears pricked up at that nugget of information. “So Zero actually isn’t a nickname?”
He shook his head, sitting down at the chair in front of the desk bolted to the wall. He turned it around so he faced her, arms on his heavily muscled thighs. As she watched, the skin on his cheek under his left eye changed. Part of it became darker and then resolved into an alphanumeric code.
00-S1057
“What is that?”
His shoulder lifted in a nonchalant shrug. “No idea. Could be anything from a serial number to a comm number for customer services.”
Zero zero… Shit. It was his name. Or the closest thing he had anyway.
Instantly she crossed the distance and was in his lap. His kiss tasted of toothpaste and clean man. She murmured under her breath in pleasure.
“Morning breath,” she muttered, breaking away to hug him instead.
His arms wrapped around her, and she nestled closer to him. The fierce hug told her all she needed to know. About how much he needed the contact… and how much she did. Resting her head against his shoulder, she closed her eyes for a moment, savoring the closeness.
Then he shuddered and swept his hand down her back. “Okay, how about we look at these messages of yours, and then I can show you just how much room there is in my shower…”
“Men! You’re bloody sex mad!” She laughed, mock slapping his shoulder even as he turned the chair so they both faced the screen.
“Nah… not a man, remember? I’m a machine… a luuuurve machine.”
“Oh. My. God… Guys, did you hear thi—”
Zero groaned as the ship-wide comm cut off, his expression pained as he looked at her. “You do realize I will never, never live that down now?”
She chuckled, leaning over to kiss his cheek. “Yeah, well, it’s accurate. Isn’t it? I say own it. Now… how do I get my messages?”
With mingled foreboding and anticipation, she watched as Zero logged onto the system for her. The language on the screen was like nothing she’d ever seen before, although it seemed hauntingly familiar. Almost like she could squint, look at it out of the corner of her eye and it would resolve into something that would make sense to her.
“Latharian?” she guessed.
Zero nodded. “It’s a common language for all of us. Most of the crew are either Lathar or half-Lathar. T’Raal and Talent are inner systems pretty boys, Skinny’s a heavy-worlder, Beauty’s backwater of some description and Fin’s a Navarr. Red’s half-Krynassis.”
She shook her head in amazement. “And we thought we were alone out here.”
“Yeah… right. In terms of space travel, you guys are barely out the cradle.” Zero snorted and then sat back. “Okay, all yours.”
Somehow, amazingly, the screen cleared of alien writing, and she was looking at her inbox on the familiar Inter-sector communications system. There were two messages. One from her brother, and the other from her mother.
Oh shit. She’d forgotten about Eric’s message. Having the most lethal special operations unit in the human systems shooting at you tended to do that. Reaching out to open it, she suddenly stopped her hand in mid-air.
“Crap. Will opening this let them track where we are?”
“Please… give us a little more credit than that,” Zero chuckled. “Skinny will have bounced that off so many arrays they’ll think you’re in the Earth president’s office.”
Heat hit her cheeks.
“Dumb question,” she muttered, but he kissed the side of her neck.
“Nah. Understandable. You’re dealing with technology you’re unfamiliar with. How would you know its limits and capabilities? It was a sound question.”
She mumbled under her breath, but the heat on her cheeks turned to a blush at the tone of approval in his voice. She’d never needed
